Alex Mould cautions gov’t on LNG re-gas contract

A financial and energy expert has cautioned to government on the lack
of transparency in all the agreements backing some Liquefied Natural
Gas (LNG) contracts it signed with some companies.

Alex Mould, who is also the former Ghana National Petroleum
Corporation CEO says the regasification project agreement contracts
of Helios/China Harbor Engineering, (GNPC) and Rosneft LNG needs
checking into.

He has expressed concern about the seeming lack of proper world-class advisors on technical, commercial and legal areas of all of the LNG regasification project agreements signed a year ago on behalf of government given the short negotiation period.

Helios and China Harbor Engineering and GNPC are constructing a terminal for the regasification project which is to be managed by Tema LNG Terminal Company.

GNPC, last year June, signed a new gas sale and purchase agreement
(GSA) deal with Rosneft for the same natural gas supply agreement it had
signed with Gazprom in September 2017.

This raised a lot of questions by energy experts then as to what necessitated the abrogation of the Gazprom contract and the cost associated with the abrogation of that contract.

“It has been a year now, yet, stakeholders including Parliament and
civil society are not getting much information about the LNG
regasification project from government through the Ministry of Energy or
from GNPC. There are more standing questions begging for answers”, Mr
Mould told the media in an interview at LNG Western Africa Conference
2019 in Accra.

“I’m not conversant with the details with the LNG re-gas contract. I’ve not seen any agreement. I believe that there’s supposed to be a breakwater being built. I don’t know who is bearing the cost of the breakwater, whether it’s the government as GHAPOHA or whether it’s going to be passed on to the project. If it’s going to be passed on to the project, we need to look at the total economics. We need to look at the supply of breakwater the gas.”

“But it’s very interesting that a
transaction of this size and this magnitude and this difficulty would be
signed within 3 months. It’s something that we need to look at. We need
to make sure that all the Is are dotted and the Ts are crossed. It
involves bringing in the right consultants to ensure that the right
feasibility is done before any decision is made”.

“It also requires to understand what security structure is behind the
transaction and what commitment Ghana has made to the project. So time
will tell”.